Monday, December 31, 2012

Saving The Game is a collaboration between three
Christian gamer geeks, Grant, Peter, and Branden. We wanted to provide a
resource for Christian gamers, and to close the gap between non-gaming
Christians and non-Christian gamers.

Sunday, December 30, 2012

In gloomier news, the current issue of Dragon marks the final installment of the Eye on Eberron
series. It is my hope that Eberron will continue to be supported in
D&D Next, but I don’t have any news on that front. With that in
mind, I am developing a new fantasy setting that I’ll be using as a
foundation for games and fiction. Expect to see a more detailed
discussion of this new world over the next few months!

But look at the last couple of lines there... a new fantasy setting! Looking forward to that.

The Pathfinder Beginner Box has been a wonderful tool for new and young gamers to start off in the gaming hobby. As a company, Paizo continues to make the right moves. There is a lot of wonderful support for the Pathfinder game line through Paizo's Pathfinder Society.
One of the more brilliant moves they've made is at conventions, kids can participate in seminars which are a series of exercises walking very young players through the basic concepts of the Pathfinder game. These are run by GMs who are very carefully selected for dealing with kids, usually teachers or parent GMs. The document used in these sessions is available for free on the Paizo site - Here.

Kid's Track Description:

Kid’s Track offer four lesson plans, broken down by minutes spent on
each subject. It discusses the basics of roleplaying games and utilizes
the Pathfinder RPG Beginner Box
to teach those fundamentals. Each lesson builds on the previous lesson
and helps a GM teach children as young as six, what roleplaying games
are and how to play roleplaying games, specifically using the Pathfinder
Beginner Box rules. Each lesson plan is followed by the four children
playing one of the four Beginner Box Demo adventures.

Pathfinder Society - what is that? Here is the description from the Pathfinder Site:

Pathfinder Society Organized Play is a
worldwide fantasy roleplaying campaign that puts YOU in the role of an
agent of the Pathfinder Society, a legendary league of explorers,
archaeologists, and adventurers dedicated to discovering and chronicling
the greatest mysteries and wonders of an ancient world beset by magic
and evil.
The campaign’s home base is sprawling Absalom, the so-called City at
the Center of the World, that stands astride the great Inner Sea on the
mountain-capped Isle of Kortos. A Pathfinder’s adventures explore the
dark alleys and political intrigue of Absalom between far-flung travels
to the most interesting and exotic locales in the world of the
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.
In Pathfinder Society Organized Play, you play a member of the
Pathfinder Society, seeking fortune and glory all over the face of
Golarion. At the same time, your character works for one of the
competing factions, all with their own motivations and secret agendas.
Play is organized into Seasons, throughout which the actions and
achievements of you and your fellow Pathfinders create an ongoing
storyline. Each season consists of at least 28 Pathfinder Society
scenarios (short, 4-hour adventures) set in a variety of exotic
locations across Golarion.

Friday, December 28, 2012

Reaper Miniatures have been doing their thing since the dawn of gaming. Naturally, when Pathfinder came out swinging the two were a natural pair. This is a gallery of miniatures produced for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game based on the iconic characters from the Core Rulebook. All of these were done by the most excellent Derek Schubert.

Tuesday, December 25, 2012

About 5 or 6 years ago I was in a pretty good D&D game that lasted at least until 15th level (based on the most recent character sheet I could dig up). Towards the end of the campaign, probably for Christmas or something, our DM gave each of us a poster of our character portrait he had secretly commissioned for us. They are presented below and as you can see they're fantastic. He would not share who the artist was at the time. Today I stumbled upon my character's picture on DeviantArt. Now I know it was an artist named Reilly Brown who has done art for many comics, mostly Marvel. His gallery is quite nice.

Sir Owlface Flamesword- in the campaign this was my character; his name was Skytheen

Monday, December 24, 2012

The FATE Core Kickstarter was funded within 15 minutes or so of it's launch. It has done quite well since then which has opened a plethora of stretch goals and opportunities (and has 35 days to go at the time of this writing). The least of these opportunities is for the smallest pledge one is granted the right to download the FATE Core draft text to study, play-test, and report errors or general feedback.

On the FATE Yahoo forums I asked if it was lawful to print the FATE Core draft. Got an answer from the boss, himself! Here's the dialog:

Jeffrywith1e: -- I'm thinking of using http://printme1.com/ to print FATE Core. The legal dialog- do we have permission to submit this preview PDF for printing?

Fred Hicks: -- Are you printing one copy, for yourself, and nobody else can saunter
along and do the same without themselves having the PDF? If so, Evil Hat
grants limited permission to print a copy.

Jeffrywith1e: -- I am printing one for myself (to tide me over till the published one ships to me
from the kickstarter!), it is as you stated. I have no one else yet to play
with. Thank you for your permission.

So I went ahead with an order through PrintMe1.com, which I've wanted to try out for some time.

Received it today and the results are impressive.

The cover is a transparent plastic or acetate sheet that protects and displays the first page.

Black and white printing on both sides of the paper. The standard or default order is produced with this black plastic comb binding for no extra charge, but other and fancier bindings are available. Color printing is also available, but that ups the cost a great deal.

The back cover is made with a black card stock.

Very nice quality at a very reasonable cost. The minimum cost is currently $13.99. This 300 page PDF clocked in under that minimum which also included shipping. Very nice value. I will probably be using this service again.